Friday, November 11, 2011

Cheesemaking is something that has intrigued me for a bit. I guess it's my ancestry...The Swiss, I suppose. I thought that my first adventure with this should be ricotta....to combine ancestries and honor the Swiss and Sicilian!

I had wanted to try making mozzarella after reading Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. She details the process and gives some supply lists. I haven't done that yet, but I am feeling a bit more confident after my first attempt with making ricotta was a success!

The September Bon Appetit has a section with instructions and also features a chef (Nancy Silverton) at a restaurant in LA at Osteria Mozza where there really is a thing called a cheese bar! This was the inspiration I needed to try to make ricotta.

We get our milk from a local dairy, so I ordered a half gallon of whole milk for the adventure. The Bon Appetit recipe also called for some whipping cream so I got that. The thing is, the cream was out of date and solid by the time I got around to making this recipe. I did need to use the milk, so I did a bit of online searching and found a recipe without the cream. The recipes I found all looked pretty similar to the one in Bon Appetit.http://www.bonappetit.com/tipstools/tips/2011/09/mozza-homemade-ricotta
I just made it without the cream and it was fine. In fact, it was better than fine..it was excellent. Even the two skeptics in this house were impressed. I had some fig jam and had a warm spoonful of the ricotta with it..delicious.

My next project in my cheesemaking adventure will be to try mozarella. It seems like the whey can be used to make ricotta. That's two cheeses in one:)